


Till Death Do Us Apart

by misswongs



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Eremika - Freeform, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, One Shot, Romance, Spoilers from chapter 138
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:22:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misswongs/pseuds/misswongs
Summary: Through the confined expansions of the wood that it's made of, through the grass, the trees, the birds soaring in the skies, they feel each other. They exist for one another, holding on to whatever is left of their fragmented bodies and withered souls—for everyone will be bone and ashes soon but they're still here, still flesh and blood, still alive.Still alive.And for now, just for now, it's enough.Moments of Eren and Mikasa at the cabin, from chapter 138. One-shot. Spoilers of the manga!
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman & Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 22
Kudos: 182





	Till Death Do Us Apart

* * *

_«you have been the embodiment of every graceful_ _fancy that my mind  
has ever become acquainted with. the stones of which the strongest london  
buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with  
your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere,  
and will be. to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character,  
part of the little good in me, part of the evil»  
_ **_—great expectations._ **

* * *

The cabin is all they have.

Through the confined expansions of the wood that it's made of, through the grass, the trees, the birds soaring in the skies, they feel each other. They exist for one another, holding on to whatever is left of their fragmented bodies and withered souls—for everyone will be bone and ashes soon but they're still here, still flesh and blood, still alive.

Still alive.

And for now, just for now, it's enough.

**—o—**

The cabin welcomes them like a god ready to sacrifice the rest of humanity just to save a few. It was old, Eren said. Almost destroyed four years ago, its owners long gone but the remnants remained, the dusty bedrooms and forgotten kitchen, the dirty bathroom and broken stairs, scraps of an old life that now belongs to them.

Mikasa is slightly surprised that Eren knew about the place, that he'd already kept it in his mind in case she answered the way he was hoping, an escape route planned out as a last resort that now had become a priority. And it was selfish, so damn selfish to leave everything behind just to grasp a tiny glimpse of peace amidst so much chaos, but that was the nature of their crime. And for now, it was enough.

It keeps them busy for a while and it feels strange, somehow, to build and to mend a place when the outside world is falling to pieces. They fix the roofs, paint some doors, the euphoria of their escapade dying down in their eyes with each passing day but reemerging in the oddest of ways. When they walk past each other and their fingers graze slightly, when their eyes meet for a moment and there’s a sparkle, a shimmer that transforms into a smile, and maybe a giggle, and a blush, and the thought that they shouldn’t be here, but they are, and there’s a strange satisfaction in that statement, in that truth. Of all the things they hadn’t been able to choose, they chose this. They chose each other over everyone else.

Is this what freedom truly feels like? 

Mikasa makes a sweater for him, plants flowers, watches him build a picnic table with the wood she chops every morning because she’s really fucking strong, it amazes him sometimes. They make, and create, and slowly become a piece of art themselves, a treasure hidden in the woods, safe from death and blood and all the things they’re so used to seeing. How does one start again? What do normal people do, when they aren’t killing and dirtying their hands with sins? What do they laugh about? How do they sleep at night, with only darkness and no nightmares to haunt them?

How does one live, when trying to run away from it all?

But Mikasa reminds herself, over and over again, that what they have is enough.

For now, it’s enough.

**—o—**

Days pass, nights come and go, and slowly Eren and Mikasa learn how to live with each other. Just the two of them.

They learn the language of their routine. Like how Mikasa rises earlier than the sun each morning but Eren keeps sleeping till noon. Or the way Mikasa falls asleep religiously at nine every night yet Eren keeps going till dawn, his thoughts piercing through his head like daggers in a titan’s neck. He knows she has nightmares, too; moments when she whimpers and shudders and he can hear her all across from his bedroom, so he walks to her bed and tucks himself in as they used to when they were children, his hand swiftly brushing the bangs out of her face until her breathing becomes quiet, and the gravity of his body pulls her closer to him. 

They sleep in separate bedrooms, as awkward as it can be sometimes, and yet they always manage to sneak into each other’s bed when the other isn’t looking, as if loving each other so openly was a crime, because it might be. Being here, with her, that’s Eren’s biggest crime, and he knows he should be punished for it, thrown into the deepest dungeon for each time his heart skips a beat when she looks at him, all bright and glowing, and her lips whisper his name.

Eren.

Yet he knows he’ll do it all over again. For her, Eren would do it all again.

And for now, that’s enough.

**—o—**

Soon, the space they share becomes tinier, almost non-existing. 

When they sit next to each other, their shoulders touch. His hands find a home on her shoulders every time she’s chopping wood and he sweetly whispers, “Hey, go back inside, I’ll do it.” Their eyes linger in places they shouldn’t, their fingers hesitate to let go and their lips shudder with words they’re too scared to say, even if they’ve already said everything there is.

It is after one of those nightmares, though, when Eren is lying next to her in bed, that Mikasa gathers the courage to ask something she’d been avoiding for an entire month. Their shoulders are touching, she doesn’t remember being this close to him since they were kids.

“Eren.”

“Hmh?”

She swallows, eyes full of tears he can’t see in the dark. “Do you regret it?”

Mikasa feels his jewel-like eyes gently loom over her, they wrap her soul the way his scarf does, still muffled around her neck. He stays silent for a few seconds. “Regret what?”

She sniffs, and the sound doesn’t go unnoticed for Eren. He frowns, watching her tears fall, the way she tries to keep it all in but it’s too much, too much, _too much._

Her body shudders, her chest breaks in a whisper. “Being here, with me. Leaving everyone behind.”

Suddenly, his heart aches with the knowledge of what it means for everyone else that they’re here, together. But Mikasa’s tears feel different, they taste different from everyone’s pain. To know she might feel unwanted, to know she felt that way because he made her believe it—having pushed her away for so long, over and over again, her pain seems to overshadow everyone else’s, even his own, even his own regrets. And Captain Levi’s words fly away from whenever he is at right now, reaching out to him in this broken little cabin they live in. They hush all his fears, wrapping him in a cocoon of a madness he wants, he yearns. 

_The only thing we’re allowed to do is to believe that we won’t regret the choice we made._

His hand flies to Mikasa’s cheek, her tears soaking his fingertips. She looks at him, unsure, and there’s a fire in Eren’s eyes. The same fire that made her fall in love with him, a fire he carried out in his veins from the moment he saved her that night, a lifetime ago. It feels so long ago now.

“I want to be where you are,” is his response, his thumb caressing the scar on her cheekbone. “That’s all I want.”

Mikasa’s eyes fall shut, lips repressing a sob when her hand flies to his face, to his long hair and his cheeks and his neck and she holds him, she just holds him, because she still has him. And it’s enough.

It’s enough.

He kisses her, then. First time their lips touch since they arrived here, first time he gathers up the courage to whisper against her lips that he wants her, that she isn’t a slave, that he’s the one who’s been bound to her from the moment they met, not the other way around. The skin of her chest glows where the moonlight kisses her. Covered by a faint layer of sweat and tears, it sparkles gold, it burns desire, passion and youth, and his fingertips can’t fight back the urge to contour every peak, every dip, every nook and cranny.

Between tears of ecstasy and want, she asks him if it’s enough. Right against his ear, when he’s kissing her neck and begging her not to leave him, she asks if it’ll ever be enough, and wonders what’s so wrong about wanting. What’s so wrong about wanting _him_ , about being here, about desiring nothing else but to stay right here with Eren until the end of their days—till death do them apart? She’d never asked for anything, never been greedy, never begged and pleaded for anything in her life. But love is a dangerous thing for a woman like her, so she craves it. All of it. All of _him._ Till the day of his death, till the day of her last breath, he will always be the source of every want she’s ever had, every dream and every hope. He’s the center of it all. Her temple, her mural, her sky.

“It will be,” Eren says, returning to her mouth, and Mikasa welcomes him with open arms, wrapping her entire soul around him. “We deserve this, Mikasa. We deserve this.”

We deserve this.

_We deserve this._

**—o—**

Mikasa believes love is selfish. 

Its nature manifests in the way Eren wakes up next to her every morning now, strong arms finding refuge in her body, begging her not to get up _just yet_ because he’s never been a morning person, his shyness disintegrating in the air when she tells him “you could just get up with me” and he answers “I prefer you right here.”

Mikasa sees it in the way Eren glows, from each action and movement and word he says, he’s glowing. He smiles, and his laugh fills the cabin with colors she’d only been able to see around him. He fishes, excited as a child when he catches one of his particular liking, the real big ones. He’s not afraid to kiss her, not afraid to yank her by the hand when she’s walking past him and stamp his lips on hers, making her giggle, whispering that she looks beautiful. It is selfish indeed. So selfish, and something inside her chest mutters it’s wrong. All of this, it’s so fucked up. What if she’d said no? What if she’d never told him how she felt, what she wanted, and simply lied to herself over and over again, telling him he’s only family? 

Would that have changed something?

Every night, with his lips on her ear and his arms around her waist, feeling his heartbeat and the way he blooms life from every part of him, Mikasa wonders if their friends are looking for them, if the Scouts are around the area, ready to find them. And despite the horrible feeling in her guts, the guilt and the self-blame, she begs God they won’t find them. _Don’t let them find us,_ she implores, selfish hands and selfish body holding onto Eren beside her.

_Please, don’t ever let them find us._

**—o—**

But it isn’t the Scouts or their friends who find them, what finally catches up to them.

It’s reality.

The cabin slowly fades away just as his touch, and the smell of his hair the day she cut it, and his voice whispering things Mikasa never imagined she’d hear him say. The only thing that remains is the heaviness of his head in her hands, the way his eyes close when she leans down for a kiss, the one and last and her mind begs that this will, somehow, be enough.

It has to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> heya! first i would like to start this note by saying EREMIKA CANON YOU UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS these past six years were worth the fight and the pain and the tears. 
> 
> I wrote this fic having in mind the feeling of selfishness that love can bring, and the desire of wanting something you know it's not morally right, but it is what you want. I love that this new chapter added that dynamic with Eremika because I live for angst. I hope you enjoyed this little piece, if you liked it, please leave a comment & a kudo <3 you have no idea how much it helps writers out there.
> 
> also!! if you like eremika very very much, I invite you to read my longfic "Scars Deeper than Love", a very romantic and angsty eremika AU that i'm working on right now, so far it has 5 chapters so go catch up and give it some love.
> 
> till next time, fellas.


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